Yes, please, I want one in my skull, too!

After all, where's the fun in letting random hackers get in to my pc when all thats there is webmail some MP3's and holiday JPEGS? No, please hack straight in to my central nervous system, I know that letting the governmet directly in to my BRAIN where they could control me without even reaching for a taser sounds like the recipe for a good healthy society!

How are the signals sent? Hardwire only? No interference? Hmm... I love technology, but you'd be mad to want this stuff in your head.

Disappointing.

When they say life is unlikely, they really mean, human life or life very, VERY much like ourselves - hell, just look at the extremophiles on this planet, and that's just life with a common origin. One world! Who knows what other possibilities there are for organic or non-organic (Silicon is less likely than Carbon but who knows?)

I reckon there must be at least 100,000's of life supporting worlds within this galaxy and maybe 1000's with intelligent life. Its a bit depressing if we're only looking for life like us. Guess its good that the aliens stay away... A world that elected G W Bush twice is obviously not ready for a close encounter.

She had it coming

I like how one commentator mentioned how much physically stronger the policeman was - so he could have beaten her up? Yeah then there would be NOTHING to talk about and NO story... yeah right!

Her behaviour was very overbearing and aggressive, he could have just backed off - in which case he might have been hit by the moving traffic which might have even been what the nasty old hag was going for. She verbally attacked him for shoving her - which from the look of it made her and the officer a lot safer from the traffic.

People have argued police aren't entitled to respect, but that doesn't mean they have to be challenged - if this was a young man nobody would have a problem with it, so its strange that the fact that she is an old woman makes it newsworthy. Want to talk about respect? Way I see it, simply not dying, doesn't entitle to someone to ANY respect and if she wants to be treated like a delicate flower she shouldn't try and boss around law enforcement personnel. She was warned and warned again, she deserved every volt.

If that much electricity didn't teach her some manners I hope they give her the chair!

Hm... Difficult!

Being what I like to think of as liberal and pro freedoms this presents me with a problem. I don't think people should have a right to kill their pets, its not as if they're bought for consumption. Maybe she needs to look up pet in a dictionary and see happy families who aren't thinking 'Huh, this creatures skin would look good on me.'

I always say stuff like fight for your right to speak even if I disagree with you but this woman's actions are so distasteful I'd be more than a little tempted to give her a piece of my mind anyway.

Just sounds like a callous, fame-hungry sicko. I hope she has as many friends as she deserves.

@ Unintended consequences

With a background in evolutionary biology more than genetics, I can say we really wouldn't have to worry about this gene being spread around in the wild - monkey eating creatures will soon solve the problem with a diet of easy-to-find tasty primate kebabs.

If humans had had a glow in the dark gene, it would have been similarly removed from our genetic makeup by keen-eyed sabre-tooth tigers a long time ago!

I don't think this is cruel. I just want to know where I can get one - but I'd prefer a blue glow to green.

re: "FAIL"?

As in an exam that can be a pass or a fail, its colloquial. If you expect grammatical correctness from news headlines you will be disappointed everywhere you go. Including the ones who should know better like the Guardian and Telegraph and so on. I think you need to chillax.

Did that cop in the classroom actually shoot himself? He seemed to be walking with a limp after his little accident. I think he got his message across that its dangerous to play with guns - so well in fact that I doubt any of those kids will want to be anywhere near another one again.

Utterly worthless

Go ahead and read the two conversations - hard to tell them apart? Yes!

Why though? Because just as the programs try to imitate a human, the humans imitate the machines!!!

Their answers become whimsical, meaningless non-sequiturs. Just like the rubbish spewed by one of these pathetic pieces of trashy code masquerading as AI.

They should stop this competition - its an insult to real artificial intelligence research and bad comedy. The mass media might be fooled in to thinking we're talking about AI but this site's for IT people who shouldn't be so gullible.

@ The idiots.

I see some foolish people here pretending that evolution and creationism are somehow equivalent, you can see how they love to confuse the common use meaning and the technical meaning of the word 'theory' you can see how they love to confuse evolution with abiogenesis, and if that starts to be answered straight to the big bang, particle physics and string theory.

What is all this stuff about respect for other views? You may not like this about science theistic cretins but science is about uncovering the truth - if we know that 2 + 2 = 4 why should they privately held, sacred and deeply personal belief that it = 5 be 'respected'?

sdA798::kola524

With respect -

'conceivably harvesting its power needs from body heat or ambient radio transmissions'

This is only conceivable if you get your physics from watching the matrix. You can't sit in the body and just get energy from heat. There would need to be a differential. I'm sorry but thermodynamics forbids either of these possibilities.

On the bright side, this means we will NEVER EVER be used as fuel by our machine masters. So please all rest easy in this regard. Nope, they'll just simply kiss us.

Mmhm

OK but for those saying 'no such thing as liquid explosives' or no explosion without a detonator I refer you to http://science.howstuffworks.com/liquid-explosives.htm which ironically was written based on the original story.

As for two compounds being made dangerous together, well we don't know what explosives the military has - Define octonitrocubane before continuing if you have an objection, and Russia has experimented with nerve gases which have to be combined from two primer solutions.

What is it you people don't get?

The AC whose father fought in WW2 says Nazism is not a valid view - ok, so what is, do you want to decide which viewpoints are valid and which aren't? What gives you the right to make that claim?

The AC who says its a shame we don't live in Austria - I'm sorry I don't follow, but like some others here you seem to be implying that anyone who calls themselves a nazi is guilty of genocide by association - I'm sorry but that's a non sequitur.

I don't attack Christians because of the terrible wrongs they caused in the crusades or the inquisition.

If in defeating Hitler's Germany we were just allowing the other side to voice its views without any opposition then it seems like there is little difference. Just because someone holds a view that would mean you would not have a say if they were in power, does not mean they're not entitled to a view.

Confused

We're only reading this due to people who fought to keep this country free? I see - and this 'freedom' is defined by silencing viewpoints not held by the majority?

Perhaps you should look up freedom and think about what it actually means. Unless Nazis are doing something like beating people up (which is illegal in itself) then they should be left to their own devices and good luck to them.

Every view, no matter how odious or offensive has a right to be heard.

Dog more intelligent than woman?

No, this isn't a comment about the dog's possible bionic canine enhancements - it just occurs to me that a woman prepared to pay $150,000 to a group of Korean scientists and then thanks God for it isn't exactly an intellectual! Why pay the money at all if its her super invisible friend? Why not just pay.... Ah... Well, as long as she's breeding dogs and not people - come back eugenics - all is forgiven.

Alas, we are not shrews!

Shrews are among the smallest mammals of all (with the possible exception of the freakish bumblebee bat) and have incredibly rapid metabolisms. We would explode if we ate as much as they need to, to keep their little engines running and I'm afraid extrapolating upwards to humans will not help us avoid the state of inebriation.

I'd be more interested if they could genetically give us that molecule which acts as anti-freeze in blood that is carried by some animals in the antarctic. At least then you could stumble back from the pub in deepest darkest winter and not care where you fell asleep on the way home.

*The vulture because it might not be dead, it might just be very, very drunk.

Oh dear...

Quantum mechanics or General relativity must be 'wrong' if they are incompatible? Oh deary, deary me.

This does not paint an accurate picture. Take Newtonian mechanics, they were not 'wrong' they were just subsumed in to a larger body of physical theories which is Einstein's GM. A new version that was somehow born out of quantum mechanics would not make GM wrong per se.

I'm not entirely sure non-scientist commentators understand this. Indeed, when they talk about science going from revolution to another almost life fashion it doesn't sound like any new knowledge at all has been gained. Yet here we are typing on computers. Ungrateful swine.

Sorry guys, you're full of it.

You're saying if you were a policeman you'd give some crazy a chance to stab you just because he's old? Hmm. Let me check my physics textbook - yep, it says that a knife pushed in to flesh can kill even if the person on the other end of the knife is elderly.

They were right to zap him. I don't know why he was wearing his civvies after an operation, that sounds a bit odd but he definitely had it coming.

I have an 'IT angle' for you all

How come in 'Independence Day' they were able to upload a computer virus to the aliens' system? If they were an advanced space-faring race would they really be using a windows OS? Oh and why do the gray aliens take such an interest in human rectums? Do they have court orders stopping them from going to more civilised worlds? There should be an intergalactic sex offender register, don't we all think?

I don't like how the question is asked 'do you believe in aliens?' - as if its parallel to ghosts or other hokum. It is not a question of belief. I think there are many thousands of advanced civilisations in our galaxy but even if there are only a handful, there are hundreds of billions of galaxies.

This is a semi-good sign

Its starting to be challenged - secrecy has never been conducive to democracy or science. Secrecy is just a veil behind which incompetence and corruption thrive. The ACLU and EFF are doing their bit though and should be commended for it.

What is going wrong with the world? I agree we need Guy Fawkes back, but this time lets not have someone with religious leanings (too many of that type of bomber around) and someone with access to lots of HMX.

OH fantastic

Just what we need - more CCTV cameras - oh this is good news - before now there was a 100 metre stretch between me and the town centre where Big Brother couldn't watch me picking my nose or committing other thought crimes. Thank you, government.

I own an illegally powerful laser

I think the point that they're being used by morons is a significant issue. Perhaps we should ban anyone from purchasing a knife since they have dangerously pointy bits which are capable of puncturing human flesh and have been used for this purpose in the past.

Its a tool. I have a power more powerful than is allowed by UK law, several times more powerful than the maximum safety level in milliwatts. I feel as an ubergeek it is my right and duty to own such a thing. I would never shine it in someone's face or lend it to someone who would.

I wish they'd start punishing idiots and stop making legislation to ban a neutral item like a laser. Its a cop-out. Where cops have to do more, maybe they should call it a cop-in.

OK not bad but...

It's not as cool (to hear about, I don't think getting turned in to a zombie by a worm is fun) as the STORM botnet - that has its own featured article on wikipedia. Not only that, but it attacked websites trying to research it, presumably at the guidance of some russian blackhat but some (not me) think it was programmed to do that itself.

Some people online seem to believe its alive! Also the upper boundaries on estimates of infected computers for storm is much higher than 400,000 - some think several million - so whose figures do we listen to?

OH and like most stories about botnets - thanks for not giving us any useful information about knowing if we're infected, knowing what systems it infects or anything to avoid the monster.

For the record a decapitated-head-of-medusa program should be able to freeze the kraken botnet in its tracks.

No, guys!

A lot of people keep saying more extreme conditions exist elsewhere in the universe, inside supernovas and so on, this just ain't so!

Particle smashers nowadays create conditions not seen since tiny, tiny fractions of a second after the big bang. There will be all sorts of exotic particles but they all have tiny, tiny, TINY half-lifes and decay to boring things like protons in electrons before anyone can blink. A proton accelerated fast enough can be turned in to a black hole but that, too will evaporate before it can take in other particles and destroy the planet.

Really strangelets are more worrying although I don't think that's a feasible danger either. Like 'neutronium' strangelets, like the matter of the hypothetical quark stars will probably not be stable anywhere else. He's just a crank...

If the world does end I won't be able to read The Reg anymore... I guess I'll find another website.

So its awful?

Shame to hear that. I agree with the message though. I remember Richard Dawkins reminiscing about a muslim protestor in London (about the Danish cartoons) who wore a placard 'apparently without irony' saying BEHEAD THOSE WHO SAY ISLAM IS A VIOLENT RELIGION.

I don't like religious people with medieval world views using technology - it smacks of hypocrisy. Let them live in their mud huts and throw rocks at each other while the world progresses and leaves those barbaric, ignorant savages in the mess they created.

OK maybe its been said

1) Freetard, stupid and only makes the speaker look foolish, not those looking for open source software - how can someone really write on a site like this and not be down with the hacker ethic? I mean seriously? wtf!

2) Google doesn't have to worry. Adobe are greedy, greedy fatcats. Good for them, of course if they didn't charge £900.00 for the extended photoshop CS3 I might have bought one. As it is? Hmm. I'll take one for free, thanks.

Imagine trying to explain to a software company that they'd make more money if they lowered their prices and stopped trying to rip people off. Revolutionary, huh? Yeah, I'm stupid because I'd rather not waste my money. Mmhm, you nailed it.

Umm, I see a positive outcome!

How about they just sell their designs as hi-res jpegs to some e-card companies or hell, make a special one, e-cards of great britain with whole sea-side sections which can be animated and sent with voice messages and all sorts.

The future can be whatever we want it to be. I hope saucy british postcards will always be available - however, I will still look down my nose at them and treat them with contempt.

Fingerprints before I fly?

To hell with that. I'm not giving them. Geez, what a messed up country this is getting to be. DIDN'T ANYONE READ 1984? Or hell, watch V for Vendetta (maybe reading the graphic novel is preferable)

Can there really be people in positions of power who thought 1984 was how a country is supposed to be? Didn't the UK's top policeman a couple of years ago lament that there was TOO much surveillance - coming from a policeman!

I'm also worried that the terminal is seeing people as 'human beings' we all know to the terminal that just means 'inferior meatbags'...

Oh please

Not being TRAINED to deal with it?

They can deal with it easily - what they lack is the permission. The whole PC culture where we can't do anything but politely ask the students to stop stabbing each other with protractors is to blame for this.

*The bird because that's what would happen to him after 10 minutes as a pet in a state school.*